


ode to broken things

by weatheredlaw



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Poetry, any combination of the two, fuck i love poetry, poetry porn, porn and poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 15:05:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Should I be impressed?" Bruce asks, fighting hard not to smile.</p><p>Tony smiles. But then, Tony smiles all the time.</p><p>"Yes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	ode to broken things

**Author's Note:**

> this is porn and it is full of poetry and also poetry porn so if you like any combination of those two things, then yeah okay.

_Withhold no atom's atom or I die,  
Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall,  
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,  
Life's purposes,—the palate of my mind  
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!_  
\-- John Keats, "I cry your mercy—pity—love!—ay, love"

 

Bruce has four things in the bag he brings with him to Stark Tower. 

The first is a toothbrush, because he isn't a liar. 

The second is a comb, made of whale bone, he thinks. It's old -- he traded a pair of worn loafers for it in New Dehli a few years ago. 

The third is a notebook -- he lost the pen that went with it in Calcutta, in the rush of grabbing the few things he owned and leaving with Agent Romanov for the helipad.

The fourth is a book of Keats poems, dogeared and worn down. It was old when he bought it, and it's the only thing he has of the Old Days. He bought it, actually, at a used book store with Betty the day before the experiment. They were celebrating, but he can't remember what now. He remembers that he showed her the book, flipped excitedly through the pages. Betty didn't read poetry like Bruce did. Betty hardly consumed fiction at all, and it was the one thing she could never indulge in with him. She always listened, and Bruce could always count on Betty to ask the right questions, because she _knew_ him, and she knew what he wanted to talk about. He misses that, sitting in his new room. It smells like concrete and paint and the incense he bought the night before, when he stole away from the tower and roamed around the city, stopping to help people sweep and move debris. No one recognized him. 

There was a bookstore, and he stopped, traded a couple hours of labor for something to read. Bruce fans out his payment now -- a copy of _Ariel_ , _In Search of Duende_ , and a collection of Millay. 

He knows the language of his people -- the language of physicists, doctors, thieves and chemists. But this. This is written on his bones. Bruce opens _Ariel_ and he breathes in sorrow and bleeding, lost words. 

_O my enemy,  
Do I terrify?_

"Didn't peg you for a Plath fan." Bruce looks up, watching Tony slip between shadows into his room. "You read Sexton, too? She's got that sort of style." He settles into a chair across the room. "You Lady Lazarus now? Is that what this is about? Every time, it's just another life for you? 'There is a charge, a very large charge, for a word, or a touch, or a bit of blood.'" 

"Should I be impressed?" Bruce asks, fighting hard not to smile.

Tony smiles. But then, Tony smiles all the time.

"Yes."

 

 

Tony's favorite thing, now, is to get Bruce to the edge, to have him there and panting, and then make him recite Neruda.

"Where were you then?" he gasps, gripping the sheets. "Who else was there? Saying what -- _Tony_ , fuck -- Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away -- _shit!_ " He comes, digging his heel into Tony's side. "I'm going to run out of Neruda," he mutters, muscles turning soft. Tony grins. "God, you're fucking strange. You are so strange."

"I like the way you say it. Do they taste good?" Tony kisses him, tongue heavy in his mouth. "The words? Can you taste them?"

"Mmmm." Bruce let's it all settle, tipping his head back and exposing his neck. 

Neruda tastes sweet, on his tongue. Like mango and honey. Neruda tastes like a love poem. 

"Now you," he murmurs. Tony rolls over, spreading his legs. Bruce settles between them, stroking his thigh carefully, trying to decide. 

It's Whitman, ten minutes later, as Bruce stretches and works him with two fingers, pushed in to the knuckle, as Tony grips what he can of the headboard and croons, " _Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturned love--_ "

 

 

It's strange because they don't even really fuck and read poetry all that often. It's just when they do, it's like a sun exploding between them, and Tony can feel every atom in his body reacting and he loves to watch Bruce's mouth move around words that taste like earth and fruit and sweat.

_Who is he that would become my follower?  
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?_

 

 

_I crave the stain  
Of tears, the aftermark  
Of almost too much love_

 

 

Sometimes they fall into a rhythm, of tossing back one line after another. Tony has a floor of the tower that's almost a communal lab. Clint hides in there some days to work on his gear, Natasha sharpening blades beside him, Steve reading in a corner. 

"In the burned house I am eating breakfast. You understand, there is no house, there is no breakfast, yet here I am." Tony tosses a set of files from one side of the lab to another. Natasha looks up, amused.

"The spoon which was melted scrapes against the bowl which was melted also. No one else is around." Bruce expands them, makes a few notes, and stores them to the server. 

"Where have they gone to, brother and sister, mother and father?" Steve looks up because Tony's voice always sounds different when there's a poem on his tongue. Like he's savoring it, down to the last letter.

"Off along the shore,perhaps," Bruce says. "Their clothes are still on the hangers--"

"--their dishes piled beside the sink--"

"--which is beside the woodstove, with its grate and sooty kettle--"

"--every detail clear, tin cup and rippled mirror."

Steve blinks, looks at his own book. 

"You're reciting this poem," he realizes, holding it up. "I...how do you know it?"

"It's my book," Tony says. Steve raises an eyebrow. "Flip to the front cover. Pepper bought it for me, thought I could use it, at some point in my life." Steve reads the inscription. It's very personal. Very private. This entire thing feels private, like he's walked in on something very intimate. But it was happening before he got here, before he even sat down. He could hear them when he came in, finished another poem, Natasha chiming in every few lines or so. Steve feels his neck flush and goes back to reading the poems.

He doesn't understand them all, but he thinks he can understand _this_ \-- this being Bruce and Tony trading words and lines and the most subtle of touches along the waist and the hip.

He can understand that.

 

 

_A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:  
Its loveliness increases; it will never   
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep   
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep   
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing._

 

 

Bruce leans in close, settled between Tony's knees, stretching him and working his cock in his hand, while Tony mumbles and trips over words. "It is June," he says, exhaling heavily when Bruce finally pushes into him and they have been _waiting_ for this, holding out for this. And now they're here. And Bruce doesn't know what. 

"I am tired of being brave."

Bruce finishes the line. He rolls his hips and curls a hand under Tony's knee. Tony threads his fingers through his hair. He can taste words, but they don't come out -- there's only nonsense, only pleading and begging and Tony Stark doesn't _beg_ , but he is now and he can hear his own voice and he doesn't care, he really doesn't fucking care--

Bruce comes first, shouting into it, his teeth catching on Tony's shoulder as he falls forward and _fuck_ it's good, it's really, really good to feel that, that tightening and spasming in his gut. He lowers his hand and curls it around Tony's dick, dragging his thumb over the head, working him until his can feel Tony's body tense.

"Men kill for this," he murmurs. "Or for as much."

Tony comes, fingers tightening in Bruce's hair. His whole body deflates and he catches his breath as Bruce presses his lips against Tony's skin, against throat, eye, and knucklebone. 

 

 

_The little boy was looking for his voice.  
(The king of the crickets had it.)  
In a drop of water  
the little boy was looking for his voice._

 

 

"Is it this one?" Tony points to another store window and this time, Bruce nods. The owner is behind the register, reading. She doesn't look up when they come in. Bruce points to a few shelves he fixed up. The hole in the wall he patched. "Wow. Why did I actually hire someone to fix the building. Could have paid you in poems and you'd have done it for free."

"You are shockingly out of touch with how the world works, you realize that?"

"It's been said." Tony drags his knuckles over a line of books. "Here." He pulls one out, flips through it, hands it to Bruce. "It's a good one, I promise."

"This is a book of Neruda love poems."

"Yeah, well, maybe you'll learn something." Tony turns around, tugs the book from his hands, and flips open to a page. Bruce has seen this book in his apartment. He's seen it in Tony's hands and heard its words on his lips. 

_Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --  
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long   
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station   
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep._

Somewhere in the middle, Bruce takes the book and tosses it onto a table, and they kiss, lavishly, without hesitation. Bruce can tasted every word they've spoken on Tony's tongue, every line and every stanza. And he knows, now, that it was never about what the words could do, or what they could _make_ them do -- it was about saying something without saying it. About making a point without every getting to it, in the end. And Bruce can't believe that he's been this _stupid_ since the start. That he didn't know what they were trying to tell each other. And he thinks, now, that he knows the feeling very well. He thinks he knows what he wants to say. 

 

 

_How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height  
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight  
For the ends of being and ideal grace._

**Author's Note:**

> the poems used, in order:
> 
> John Keats, "I cry your mercy—pity—love!—ay, love"  
> Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"  
> Pablo Neruda, "Clenched Soul"  
> Walt Whitman, "Sometimes with One I Love"  
> Walt Whitman, "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand"  
> Robert Frost, "To Earthward"  
> Margaret Atwood, "Morning in the Burned House"  
> Anne Sexton, "The Truth the Dead Know"  
> Federico García Lorca, "The Little Mute Boy"  
> Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How do I love thee? (Sonnet 43)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] ode to broken things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10821471) by [decoy_ocelot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decoy_ocelot/pseuds/decoy_ocelot)




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